Sixteen

He entered a contest for war bond stamps and didn't win. "Jesus saves why don't you." was not a popular poster at his school. But his mother thought it was clever. Embarrassing, but clever.

That was last year.

Now he is far from home. There is a war going on, but he isn't fighting. He is barely sixteen.

The brightest boy in his school last year, he knows no one here at college. The girls are all two or three years older. They seem so sophisticated and the boys do too.

It is a gray night in October 1942 and he looks out the window of his second floor walk up. The butcher across the street has closed up shop, but he can see in through the window. He grinds up meat scraps into a big bowl, then he adds egg shells and leftover vegetable parts and some other old meat scraps too.

When he stops grinding it up, he mixes it with his big beefy hands and the gray mixture looks like brains, or entrails, or some other disgusting stuff.

Until the man adds potassium and suddenly the boy realizes this is tomorrow's hamburger.

He gags.